First and Last I Love You
by QuinOfHearts
Summary: One terrifying storm causes Tegan to confess her love. ( Quincest ) Beta: (on tumblr) battybookworm
Liquid gurgled its way up the spout, chilly as it hit my waiting palm. The water heated against my hand before I moved the soapy sponge and the pan to rinse them. Suds slid down my wrists as I worked, scrubbing, my gaze wandering to my sister's back to the left of me.

Tegan had taken a seat on the couch in the living room. Her spare hand, now circling her still steaming mug, lays lazily over the armrest to switch between channels. The noise is low enough that each channel hums with the same buzz, the only change being the colors that flash vibrantly across the old screen. Tegan had complained this year that I still had failed to buy a newer model, but seeing her seated a few feet from the same tv I've always had, leaves me strangely contented. I turn back around, smiling at the breakfast plates as I finish up.

Setting the now rinsed dishes onto the rack to dry, I grab the dish towel for my dripping palms. I scrub away the last drops with a strong brush of the ratty fabric. Placing it on the counter, folded, I grab our popcorn bowl before joining her.

Tegan always makes popcorn for the first night. As I cleared and cleaned she would arrange and mix the spices in the bowl before setting it aside until I was finished. I'd never seen her eat a piece before I sat down. Ever.

My hand ruffles through the kernels as I settle into the worn cushions. Tegan had paused on a public news channel. Her eyes remaining focused on the screen as I tangle my legs with hers. Setting the popcorn bowl in my lap, I turn to see what we're watching.

This year the news stations have been freaking out. Tone serious, the woman uses large swooping gestures to follow the path of the storm. It's made its way through multiple states, leaving a total of almost thirty tornadoes in its wake.

We both look to the window, the sky darkening. Clouds pucker in preparation of rain. The woman on the news is making weather suggestions, ideas for safety measures that I know are logically long past due. My hand extends towards where Tegan's far arm is still clutching the remote. She turns to me, silent, with a question in her eyes. She has her complaints. The rooftops worn thin and my lungs to weak to fix them myself. I had moved most of the buckets to the attic space to distract Tegan from their presence. As the rain starts, the soft sound of water hitting metal comes from above in a steady beat. Tegan's distaste is plain on her face. I shrug.

"Give it here." I mimic grabbing motions with my fingers. She rolls her eyes before passing it to me. Her legs move to fold under her as I switch the channel.

Settling on the familiar opening of the Dog Whisperer, I let her pull the popcorn onto her own lap, falling to lean on her side as we watch Cesar Millan on his never ending quest.

As the day goes on the rain starts to fall harder. The storm surely roiling not far behind.

When we were younger we were terrified of storms. The dark clouds swallowing up summer sun. We would cry and sleep in each other's beds. Our small arms stuck holding each other all night, too scared to leave our room for the safety of our mother's.

My sleepless nights were always filled with the tearful view of Tegan's matching eyes meeting mine. We would stay together that way until our mother came to us in the morning. Her soft hand on my back would wake us from our frozen state to encircle her safe warmth.

When our Mom told our Aunt Marie she flipped. Our aunt, ever adventurous, was an avid stormwatcher and lover. She became determined to make us lovers of the sport as well.

One summer she picked us up to take us out to her country home during storm season. Our Aunt, small and brash as ever, drove her truck erratically through the long spiraling countryside. Tegan and I's small forms shoved into the truck cab next to her. We were terrified until the actual storm rolled in.

She made the night so fun. We reached her old house as the rain started, running hand in hand to the porch. Big eyes watching her as she fiddled the key through the door. Rushed into the safety of indoors, we were served hot chocolate and watched from the window as the outside world grew dark and angry.

Marie had distracted us, playing games and telling us funny stories. She spoke about how when the sky rained it was a great angel crying. When we jumped from the thunder it was a giggly story about angels bowling, pins crashing as heavy sounds shook us. The lightning that broke the clouds was angels peering down with a flashlight; checking to make sure we were still there, still watching. And we were. Watching patiently as the storm continued.

At the end of the night, instead of the bedroom, she made us a fort in front of the living room window and let us sleep watching the storm pass over us in shadows across each other's sleepy faces.

After that summer, we couldn't stop. Every summer for the next eight years, our aunt would arrive at our front door. Her noisy old truck would grumble its presence through the neighborhood as we made our way back to the little house out in the country. Our mother would've protested the safety of it all had she been capable to keep us away.

To make her fears worse, Aunt Marie was killed in a horrible car wreck only weeks after our eighteenth birthday. She left the house to us in her will, her sudden death lacking a proper note and a strong wish to carry on her memory.

We decided to share it. Moving me down into the old country house. I would reside in it year round, finding an easy sense of simplicity and comfort in the lonely little place. Tegan wanted to stay close to our mom, finding an apartment in the middle of bustling Vancouver. Every summer Tegan moves down with me so we can see out the storms together.

Usually Tee and I have this down pat. We sit on my porch until the rain starts. Camping by the window that oversees the front yard while playing old songs that take us back to those eight long summers with our aunt.

A tradition had begun that first summer, one I assumed we'd honor until we'd gone old and senile. Putting around each other, cheery as children, as storms battered the roof.

This year had put a damper on those projections.

Tegan and I had fought over the phone this year. Her trip postponed weeks and almost canceled. Something had kept her on edge. Where Tegan used to love the storm season and the old car I'd bought to replace Marie's lost truck, she now seemed trapped in catching their faults.

 _It wasn't safe_ , she'd whined, as she and I spoke on the phone almost a month ago. By the end of the call she had been snapping at me, saying I was foolish and we should've stopped long ago. She'd hung up angry and I hadn't heard back. Not wanting to make it worse by adding more, I didn't reach out.

I'd assumed she wasn't coming until her call came through yesterday morning. She'd waited for me at the airport. The hour long drive had been in stiff silence. Tegan rushing to take my room when we got there. I'd slept on the couch.

This morning she seemed content again.

Together on the couch, one episode quickly becomes two and then three shortly after. We mosey through lunch and the large bowl of popcorn empties slowly. Tegan sits across from me on the couch, both our backs to an armrest so that our feet slash across each other messily. Between us, where the cushions sink in, a small mess has gathered of kernels that Tegan or I have been tossing. It is between one such toss, that the opening music to a new episode starts playing. A loud clap of thunder interrupts Tegan mid throw. "You know if the storm is as bad as they're saying we should go check it out." she suggests, gesturing towards the living room window.

"It's probably not even that great." I shrug, picking up a piece from my side and popping it in my mouth. Truthfully, I'd assumed Tegan didn't want to do it this year. All her hesitance and general irritation had made me forgo the whole plan. I was happy enough to sit and watch tv with her. I didn't need the storms, they were never my favorite part. Tegan was.

Watching storms with her had been our tradition far before our aunt gave name to it. She had pulled us from our fears but kept us together, something I'd always been thankful for.

It was hard to not be thankful when able to watch Tegan's face light up each year, the lightning snapping across the sky to illuminate the defining panes of her face. She grew those summers, lean and sharp. What I couldn't see in me, I watched in her as we moved through the same motions each year.

Tegan had always been so happy as a child. Friendlier than me. Her life in the big city suited her. An easy knack for having people like her and her liking them back made it difficult for me to see her staying by my side.

That childhood fear had settled in my gut again this summer. Tegan's phone call leaving me for weeks to worry. I didn't curl up and cry as I once did, but it still sat within me like a stone. Heavy, I waited.

Now, the stone had lessened. My middle felt full of air. Toes firmly curled between Tegan's thigh and the couch. Encompassed, I felt warm and at ease. Perhaps too at ease.

Glancing up, I can see the unrest in Tegan's brow. Her lips pursed, eyes trained back on the tv. My feet are taking up most of her lap, but the way she sits, arms crossed and set back, it's as though we are not touching at all.

It makes my breath stutter and lodge itself in my throat.

I needed Tegan's touches. Her hands on me. Her warmth. Isolated as I liked to be, I needed our connection in these summer months like it was my lifeline pulled taut to last year round.

Tegan never needed me that way. She moved away from me. Lived apart easily. She called and visited, but a part of me assumed it was more just to have an answer to the silent question she always heard me ask.

It's abrupt when she stands, but a part of me is ready for it. I've expected it for so long.

"If we aren't even going to watch the storms this year then why am I here, Sara?" Her voice is thick with annoyance. Feet pacing, the tv goes on behind her but I barely notice its. The noise of Tegan's heavy breaths and feet on the hardwood, rising even above the growing storm outside to become all I hear.

"You begged me to do this this year, Sara! You know I have a girlfriend back home that I could be with. I dropped everything for you!" And it's true. My throat tightens at those words. I had dragged her down here. I had been selfish. I am selfish now, soaking in her presence instead of trying to keep it.

I can't say anything. I don't know what I could. Instead I find the remote and change the channel to the news station again, letting it play across our silence without meeting her eyes. "I'm sorry, Tee." I mumble to the cross of my own legs after a few aching moments.

I don't know what she's doing, too far out of my peripheral vision to catch sight of. I wait, letting my apology gain weight in the air between us, before she sighs letting the air rush back into my lungs. A gentle hand meets my crossed legs, pushing them out of the way as she sits beside me. I exhale as I feel her body settle in beside me, her hand still finding space to rest on my thigh.

"I'm sorry too." I turn my head, finally catching sight of her again. Her shoulders have dropped back into a slump. She seems deflated, but when she turns to me there's a small smile tenuously set across her lips, "I shouldn't have snapped. I'm not mad at you, just stressed." She shrugs, her fingers are fiddling with the end of my shorts. The pads of her fingertips tickling in a small effort to soothe.

"It's okay." I nod, placing my palm over her still moving fingers. Tegan's always been one for movement during her discomfort. The look of relief that crosses her face as I finally match her gaze makes it easy to forget anything that came before. "Should we go take a look outside?" I suggest, squeezing her fingers.

"Yes!" her excitement lights up her face, an adorable quality that makes it almost impossible not to be happy beside her as she leads the way to the window.

Our hands remain fitted against each other as she pulls me out of the seat. I follow, easily, basking in the feeling of being tethered to her. I could hold on forever.

I play with the idea of telling her this, the words caught on my tongue as she looks back at me with a grin. The moment is lost as soon as it began, her hand releasing mine once we reach our destination. I don't let myself feel sad. It'd be silly to be sad.

Outside, the sky had turned to the darkest shade of gray I have ever seen. It's like a whirling set of painted canvas to cover up the sun that we had left only hours ago. That light has long gone, hidden behind the storm. The wind has already started, the forceful air bringing every item not strapped down into the sky with it. A strange and random waltz of debris.

"This is amazing!" Tegan lays her hand on the window, stepping close enough to put her face to the glass. So innocent, almost childish, in her wonderment.

And it is. It is amazing how much the world changes here. How easy it is to watch things get torn apart and still feel safe at home. It's not what anything I need to see though.

I lean against the windowsill beside her, watching her with an almost nonexistent smile, "Sara! Why aren't you excited?"

She turns to look at me, free hand reaching toward me. Her cheek remains flat against the glass giving the silly look on her face the dramatic backdrop of the storm behind her. She's grinning again, wide and full as she meets my eyes. I smile back, letting my body lean into her, into her touch.

Her hand brushes my thigh, a shock running down my spine at the sudden contact. The shorts having ridden up my thigh leaving bare skin to meet her hot palm. Refraining from biting my lip, I break eye contact and look down at where we're touching. We're closer than I'd initially thought. My body heat easily trapped under hers as her arm pulls me into her little circle.

I take a second to will myself to move away because her hands are so warm and comforting. When I do move my knee away, I try to pass it off as a simple shuffle of limbs before looking back up at her. In the short moment where her hand loses contact her smile falls too, faltering in the midst of her once bright expression.

"I'm excited." I try, grinning at her. "I'm just a bit better at holding it in than some of us."

She ignores my comment, eyes remaining trained on my own as her teeth worry at her lip. Eventually I'm released and she turns her attention back to the window. I let my eyes close.

"Do you think it'll be as bad as they're saying?" she questions.

"It's already bad, the question is will it get worse." I chuckle and glance back out the window. It has gotten worse. The sky has somehow gotten darker. The rain coming. Such dry rain. Something always a wonder to me about this weather.

"Smart ass." The melody of her laugh makes me smile, turning back to her. I study her face. The familiar slope to her nose. The curl of her lashes as they move both up and down to meet with the skin of her cheek. The crease that has formed at the edge of her smile from so many years sporting that same easy grin.

I keep watching her as she lights up when something flies down the road. Her features quick to fall into amazement making her smile widen even further. "Did you see that?!" She questions turning her head quickly and meeting my eyes that had yet to stray from her. She's pointing, hand half raised to gesture outside, but something slows her movements. Distracting her.

Her teeth graze her bottom lip, catching my eye as I slowly shake my head, "I missed it." She frowns for a moment before I add, "I'm sorry."

She quickly perks up and laces her fingers with mine, "That's okay." My hand settles quickly back into hers as she squeezes tightly. A loud clap of thunder rumbles the floor and walls around us. She lets out a low chuckle, but makes no move to look. "This will be great! You just need to get into the mood of things, Sasa!" She encourages.

"I'm getting there." I lie and force a small weak smile for her. The smile she sends back to me gleams with joy before she goes back to looking out the window. I quickly glance at our hands and smile. She wouldn't understand now if I pulled again, it would only hurt her. So I don't.

The wind howls making the house shake a little and the lights flicker. I watch Tegan as she shuffles for a moment, a bit nervously. Her eyes shift to meet mine quickly before moving back to the window.

A moment passes with silence between us. Nothing but the pitter patter of rain hitting the window and the faint sound of the tv in the other room fills the void.

We're interrupted from our peace only moments later. The loud screech of the tornado siren just down the drive comes on. I jump to look, ripping my eyes away from Tegan who's worried gaze moves over to me. I look out the window and notice the rain has gone quiet. The peaceful rhythm interrupted.

When it becomes almost nothing I decide to pull my phone out of my pocket. "Why would the sirens go off but the rain is letting up?" I wonder aloud.

"Maybe, it's in the next town over?" Tegan suggests, "But, you should check anyway." She adds quickly. I feel her body lean into mine so she can see my screen. I type in my password and slide to the next page, my finger tapping the blue app. It takes a moment for the app to load but when the spinning circle is done all the weather app shows is a black screen with the words,

"DANGER, GET TO A SAFE ZONE!" Running across it.

I feel my familiar fear trapping itself in me. Tegan's grip on me tightens as the power drops, the house jolts, and the sirens go quiet.

"Tegan, this is going to be bad!" I shout, turning, trying to think of what to do, trying to remember how much time we need to get to the safehouse, trying to remember if I'd locked the door, trying to move us towards it, pulling on my sister's arm. "Tee! We have to go!" I'm begging and she doesn't move. She stays still. Stays staring.

"TEGAN!" I scream, panic icing my words when she doesn't move again. I look out the window and know why.

A dark twister has filled the sky. It's swirling presence connecting the dirt of the yard up to the heavens in a strange rope-like spell. It's beautiful, looking almost soft from afar, but the tell tale signs of the things it carries leave me crashing back into our sick reality.

"TEGAN PLEASE!" I scream and pull her arm again.

She moves suddenly along with my grip, the force of my body finally moving her. I keep her hand in mine and drag her towards my bedroom. Towards the back door. Towards safety.

"Sara," I hear Tegan's wrecked call of my name, tears already taking their toll. "Sara, no." She cries, her feet stalling us on the hardwood as she digs in.

"What's the point?" She turns me to meet her gaze, something sick settled deep in her tone. I know the words before she says them. Know the truth before I look for it.

"We're not going to make it." I can't listen.

"Don't you dare do this, Tegan!" Tears fill my eyes, "I refuse to let you die!" I feel my fingers clawing at her shoulders, trying to free myself from her grip. Trying to free us both.

She pulls me into her further, my tears pressing to the fabric against her chest. Some dirty t-shirt she'd slept in and made no effort to change. I feel my fists making weak contact at my continued struggle, but it's pointless. I know it's pointless.

I'm still not fully calm as her hand finds the curve of my jaw. My thoughts are still lost to my panic as her eyes meet mine. I can't think beyond losing her. Can't stop wishing she would let me save her.

Tegan is resigned though. Her face set in whatever decision resides in her, leaving her in an eerie calm to match the dark and the silence that surround us.

I hear my heartbeat when she kisses me. Hear the ever pounding sound as it thuds in me. I can't think why. Can't understand as her other hand moves to hug me instead of to restrain. I can't think as I fall into her. Let her consume me in her calm. Her lips are welcome breath to my drowning thoughts and it's over far too soon.

I'm still breathing her air when she pulls back. There are tears in her eyes that she doesn't let fall, but I can't help watching her in wonder, curious what she means, what she meant.

"I love you, Sara." she says, her hand moving from my chin to brush the tear tracks below my eyes. She's holding me. She's holding me and she loves me.

Her lips meet mine again and now I kiss her back. My hands move to the nape of her neck, tangling my fingers in the curls found there.

"Tegan," I whisper her name against her mouth, pressing kisses across her as though it will keep us there longer, "Tee, I love you too."

I couldn't tell you when it happened. When the house crumbled or when the wind pressed against our bodies. When we were lifted. When our lips moved apart to say our last goodbye.

I couldn't tell you anything.

To think Tegan would claim me as the poet. Those moments she left me speechless.


End file.
